Sunday, August 30, 2015

New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez became the second prominent Democrat—New York Senator Charles Schumer was the first—to announce his opposition to President Obama’s Iran nuclear deal. In a common refrain among supporters of the deal, starting with Obama, the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized that Menendez opposition to Iran pact risks war, because

Obama was right on the larger point: The alternative to this agreement is indeed war. And nothing Menendez said in his thoughtful speech Tuesday opposing the deal refuted that core fact.

The choice now is between this deal, and no deal at all. Because if the United States walks away, the international sanctions regime that got Iran to the table will fall apart, according to Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and the bulk of independent experts.

Rejecting this deal would hand the hard-liners in Iran a giant victory, allowing them to rush towards building a bomb without restraint, and without international inspectors on hand to keep tabs. Iran is only a few months from having the materials to build a bomb, according to the best intelligence, which Menendez does not challenge.

So without this agreement, Obama or the next president could face a horrifying choice: Either allow Iran to become a nuclear power, or launch air strikes to destroy suspect facilities.

I left these comments, which earned the honor of “Featured Comments,” out of the 198 comments posted, directly under the Star-Ledger article:

The underlying danger is that our leaders have never acknowledged that we are already at war with Iran and what it stands for; imperialistic, totalitarian Islam—an enemy that seeks a worldwide subjugation under a Sharian theocracy. This is not a “radical” interpretation of Islam. It is fundamentalist Islam.

We have been at war with this movement since 1979. It’s never been a “War on Terrorism,” any more than the war with the Empire of Japan was a “War on Kamikazes.” The danger is in the fact that we have never acknowledged this war for what it is.

True, the Imperialist Islamic movement is not fully united. Various factions jockey for power within the movement. But all are united by the same essential goal, and Iran is the leader and beau ideal of the movement. Iran’s own constitution declares explicitly that worldwide Islamic revolution and domination is its ultimate goal and duty. The Iranian constitution states:

The Mission of the Constitution is to identify itself with the basic beliefs of the movement and to bring about the conditions under which the lofty and worldwide values' of Islam will flourish.

The Constitution, having regard to the Islamic contents of the Iranian Revolution, . . . provides a basis for the continuation of that revolution both inside and outside the country. It particularly tries to do this in developing international relations with other Islamic movements and peoples, so as to prepare the way towards a united single world community.

. . . the Islamic Republic's army, and the corps of Revolutionary Guards . . . have responsibility not only for the safeguarding of the frontiers, but also for a religious mission, which is Holy War (JIHAD) along the way of God, and the struggle to extend the supremacy of God's Law in the world.

I don’t know if Obama’s deal is the best path toward avoiding the military option or preventing Iran from getting the bomb, or if Menendez is right that the deal must be killed. I don’t have enough expertise to make that judgement. Obama claims his way is the best way forward. I hope he’s right. But I do believe Obama is wrong to separate the nuclear issue from the wider context. The most fundamental issue is not Iran’s quest for a nuclear bomb. Many countries have a nuclear bomb, but are not a threat to the world. The most fundamental issue is Iran’s “Holy War (JIHAD) along the way of God.”

I believe that the choice is NOT the Iran deal or war with Iran. We are already at war with Iran. We will be until Iran explicitly and unconditionally renounces its stated imperialist goals the way Imperial Japan was made to renounce, not just its aggressive goals, but its internal culture of war that gave rise to its aggression, under FDR’s policy of unconditional surrender. Iran is not just the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. It is the world sponsor of a movement not much different from the goals of Soviet communism or the Axis Alliance. Until we publicly acknowledge this reality, we should be very worried about any deal any of our leaders make with Iran, because—given Iran’s ideological state—there is no way today’s Iran will see a deal any differently than the Soviets or the Nazis—as a means to advance its aggressive goals.

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My comments were inspired by the video put out by the Ayn Rand Institute’s Elan Journo, Assessing the Iran Nuclear Deal. I highly recommend this 12 minute video.

The Star-Ledger cites Jersey City’s new paid sick leave law as proof that it “works”:

Fifteen months ago, an ordinance was launched that requires Jersey City businesses with 10 or more employees to provide their workers with five paid sick days a year, and - mirabile visu! - the city somehow hasn't fallen to pieces.

Just the opposite, actually.

The Eagleton Center at Rutgers has surveyed 289 businesses in town and learned that business is booming: Four out of five employers offer paid sick leave, 92 percent of them said there has been no abuse of the program, and 42 percent report actual improvement in worker productivity, better quality with hires, and/or lower turnover rates.

Those who claim that mandatory paid sick leave would cost jobs are correct, regardless of statistics. When you artificially raise the cost of hiring, the incentive to hire is reduced. This is easily proven through a little introspection. Just ask yourself: As a consumer, is cost a consideration before you buy something? Why would it be any different for employers, the “consumers” of labor?

The Star-Ledger’s flippant “Oh, and say it loud and proud, Chamber of Commerce: Since Mayor Steve Fulop imposed this policy in the state's second largest city, unemployment has plummeted” notwithstanding, the drop in unemployment proves nothing regarding Jersey City’s forced paid sick leave law. As any basic economics text will tell you, employment is affected by myriad factors. The Star-Ledger ignores all context. Indeed, the very article cited by the Star-Ledger quotes Mayor Fulop as crediting Jersey City’s drop in unemployment to the city’s “strategic approach to both attract development and new businesses.” The sick leave law isn’t mentioned in the article. So the Star-Ledger is disingenuous to even bring up the employment picture. More likely, unemployment would have improved even more without forced sick pay.

It’s also important to realize the hidden effects of job cost-escalating legislation. Such laws hamper smaller, newer, and financially strapped businesses struggling to get off the ground and/or expand. On the other hand, such laws favor larger, established businesses, such as the 62% that already have voluntary paid sick leave. New competition is thus hampered. As the other article cited by the Star-Ledger observes, more than 75% of the businesses required to pay sick time under Jersey City’s law are unaffected by the law. Fulop’s law favors established businesses that already have paid sick time. Like most economic regulation, the law is in effect a back-door subsidy to established business (which, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, tend to have the most political influence).

The most important reason why mandatory paid sick leave is bad law is because it is immoral, violating the rights of employers to set the terms of employment for the jobs they create and maintain. It also violates the rights of employees, especially young, inexperienced workers looking for an opening onto the economic ladder of upward mobility. These “silent victims” of rights-violating labor laws like mandatory paid sick leave, minimum wage laws, ObamaCare mandates, and the like, will have less chance of finding a job, if not lose a job they already have. As costs of employment are forced up, employers will demand more experience in job hiring even as they try to make due with fewer employees. Jobs—entry level jobs especially—will suffer.

It makes common and empirical sense. No matter how one cuts it, mandatory paid sick pay is immoral and economically destructive, especially for the most vulnerable—young, inexperienced job-seekers. Aside from instances of fraud or breach of contract, governments at all levels should stay out of employer-employee contracts. Such contracts are rightfully and morally a strictly voluntary matter between employers and job-seekers. Who the h--- are a bunch of politicians to dictate how other people manage their employment affairs? Government has no business dictating employment terms.

Wednesday, August 26, 2015

The Obama Administration’s attack on private, for-profit career colleges will get a new life under a Hillary Clinton Administration. Commenting favorably on Clinton’s recently announced government plan to bail college students out of their debt burdens, the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized about Clinton’s “piecemeal package”:

Its best component . . . is it continues the Obama administration's attack on exploitation, enforcing a gainful employment rule that judges ruthless for-profit schools on their students' debt and incomes after graduation.

The elephant in the room is the fact that the government college financing gravy train caused the runaway college costs that Clinton now wants to fix with still more taxpayer largess. It’s the same old scheme, repackaged: Wave the magic wand of more government subsidies, and the cost problems Americans face with higher education will miraculously disappear. No concern for who will be forced to pick up the tab—American taxpayers themselves.

The worst of this editorial, and of Clinton's plan, is the vicious smear and attack on “ruthless for-profit schools.”

For-profit colleges, also called career colleges, cater mostly to mature working poor and middle class students who are trying to improve their skills through education while juggling jobs, families, and other adult responsibilities. These schools succeed despite unfair competition from public colleges, which have the benefit of taxpayer subsidies that enable them to keep tuitions artificially low.

The Obama Administration’s attack on for-profit schools is motivated by an ideological bias against profits, not any concern about “exploitation.” The gainful employment rules are rigged mainly to target the for-profit colleges. There is a double standard here. If the gainful employment debt-to-earnings guidelines were fairly enforced against all colleges, the public colleges and non-profit colleges would fare as bad or worse than the for-profits. The problem of the disconnect between the cost of higher education and the ability to repay the loans cuts across all of higher education, not just private for-profits. And it is mainly the government’s fault, [relating to the wide-open spigot of easy government-backed student loans]. Yet Obama gives all but the for-profits a pass.

Clinton’s plan continues that hateful attack. If successful, the discriminatory attack on for-profit colleges would cut off an important educational path for millions of students trying to improve their career prospects.

True, there are some unscrupulous private for-profit colleges. But the same goes many times over for public colleges, which have ridden the government’s student loan gravy train to tuition increases four times the rate of inflation over the last several decades. But the Obama Administration and the Left generally are allowing their hatred of profit-seeking to drive a scheme to target, crucify, and eventually eliminate the for-profits and gain increasing government control over higher education. Their use of government power to discriminatorily attack the for-profits would make any gangster drool with envy.

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Students attending or considering for-profit colleges that don’t meet the gainful employment standards will lose access to federally-backed loans and grants. Given the dominance of the government in student financing, this will effectively put many of these schools out of business. And that, not any concern about “exploited students,” is the goal of Obama, Clinton, and their mouthpieces in the media like the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

The government should not be involved in lending money to students at all. But so long as it is, and so long as it regulates these loans, it is morally obligated—and should be legally obligated—to treat all students and all educational institutions equally under the law. Toward that end, Congress should amend the Higher Education Act to forbid the executive branch from acting prejudicially against private-sector, for-profit colleges and universities.

Monday, August 24, 2015

New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine ran a nice article last March 2015 regarding what he coined “national anti-pipeline movement.” In his article, Pipeline opponents' oily logic: The alternatives are much worse for the environment, Mulshine shredded the cause of the NIMBY/Environmentalists’ anti-pipeline movement. After noting the NJ Sierra Club’s call for more “investment” in solar and wind, Mulshine wrote:

No, we don't. Wind and solar are incredibly inefficient compared to fossil fuels. Wind power sounds wonderful in theory. But it would take about 100 of those massive 360-foot wind turbines to equal the output of a typical conventional plant like Beesley's Point in Atlantic County - which the enviros are trying to shut down with another NIMBY campaign focusing on the perils of a proposed gas pipeline.

To equal that amount of power, you'd have to put a windmill on every decent-sized mountain in Northwest Jersey. Imagine climbing to the top of the Sourland range only to see a vast field of wind turbines - and the corpses of the hawks and eagles they kill.

The Sourland Mountain Range is a preserve that runs through Somerset and Hunterdon Counties in Central New Jersey. Mulshine tells us in his article about an excursion he took through the preserve. On a run, he came upon two pipelines running through the preserve—the Texas Eastern Pipeline and the Buckeye Pipeline. Mulshine observes that, if not for a few stakes identifying the location of the pipelines, he wouldn’t have known they were buried there.

I left these comments:

If Mr. Mulshine had ventured a little farther West on the Sourland Mountain range, he would have encountered evidence of another front in the War on Pipelines; lawn signs opposing the proposed PennEast natgas pipeline through Western Hunterdon and Mercer Counties. Here, too, another branch of the unholy alliance of NIMBY hypocrites and anti-industrial environmentalists is at work trying to stop the pipeline from being built and delivering life-giving energy to consumers. As usual, Jeff Tittel and his Sierra Club are leading the charge.

Of the two factions, the NIMBYs are the easiest to debunk and the least threatening: They are moral hypocrites for opposing pipelines in their back yards while continuing to enjoy the benefits of America’s 2.4 million mile pipeline network to sustain their lives. The “environmentalist extremists behind the anti-pipeline movement” are the much bigger danger, as they are driven by an irrational ideological opposition to reliable, plentiful, economical energy that human well-being and a liveable environment depends on. If they ever got their way, the human wreckage would be unimaginable.

I’ve been fighting my own personal battle against this alliance with article comments, letters to the Hunterdon County Democrat, and even a 3000 word post on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission website regarding FERC’s review of PennEast’s application, in which I rebut the main arguments advanced by pipeline opponents. Most of the PennEast opposition’s “logic” is just as illogical as Pilgrim’s opponents. On my daily 3-mile walk, I stroll right over the Transco easement in Readington, under which 3 major natgas transmission pipelines, surrounded by houses and farms, deliver vital energy to New Jerseyans. What’s so bad about Transco’s pipelines, especially when weighed against the enormous human benefits they deliver? I don’t get how anyone can believe the nonsense that PennEast’s pipeline would ruin the Sourland Mountain, as opponents claim in signs such as “Stop the Pipeline, Save the Sourlands.”

There is a valid concern about the threat of eminent domain powers being granted to pipeline companies. But given the overall vital necessity of pipelines, it’s a shame and a danger that more average energy consumers don’t speak up on behalf of pipelines.

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Mulshine also mentions the NIMBY/Environmentalist opposition to the Pilgrim Pipeline proposal through Northeastern NJ. He observes that the goal of the national anti-pipeline movement is to shut down oil and gas drilling by killing the means of delivering the product to refineries and consumers. And then he concludes:

Then enviros say this is all necessary in an attempt to curb CO-2 emissions. But if they were really concerned with CO-2 they'd support nuclear power, which produces massive amounts of energy with zero emissions.

Instead they're engaged in a thinly disguised effort to bring economic progress to a halt in the name of the environment.

As for the NIMBYs, if they're really worried about the risks from pipelines, the first thing they should do is disconnect their houses from the natural gas lines that runs down their streets. If that stuff's so dangerous in the middle of the woods, why would you let it into your house?

Mulshine concludes, “As for me, I'm glad the pipelines are there.” So am I. So should anyone who values their comfortable, safe, enjoyable lives the energy from these pipelines deliver.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

A new report on behalf of PennEast Pipeline co., which has run into stiff local and environmentalist opposition to its proposed natural gas pipeline through Pennsylvania and New Jersey, argues that—

Families and businesses in eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey would have saved more than $890 million in energy costs had the proposed PennEast Pipeline been in place during the 2013-2014 winter.

The 2013-2014 winter was a particularly cold one for the region. Not surprisingly, opponents reacted negatively to the report. As the Hunterdon County Democrat’s Terry Wright reports:

Critics immediately blasted today's report.

"The new claim by PennEast is more hot air," said Jeff Tittel, director NJ Sierra Club. And he termed the supposed savings for consumers to be a "false assumption since the price of natural gas is set by the overall market, not just in one area."

"There is no guarantee the gas from this pipeline would stay here; it could just as easily be exported from Cove Point, Md.," he added. He was referring to a liquefied natural gas export terminal under construction there by Dominion Resources. The U.S. Energy Department has approved Cove Point's planned exports to other countries starting in 2017.

"The reason PennEast keeps spinning with reports is because the public opposes this pipeline," Tittel added, calling it "unneeded, unnecessary and unwanted."

I left these comments challenging Tittel:

[T]he supposed savings for consumers to be a "false assumption since the price of natural gas is set by the overall market, not just in one area."

“A lack of pipelines is depriving consumers of the full benefits of low-cost energy. Although the wells in Pennsylvania are practically in the backyard of the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states, pipeline companies are still working to connect the gas fields to the utility pipes beneath towns and cities. Until they do, a lot of gas will continue to get pumped more than 1,000 miles from the Gulf Coast to the Northeast.”

The more fundamental issue is moral; the rights of producers and their consumers to voluntarily contract to mutual benefit. Who is Tittel to claim that the pipeline is "unneeded, unnecessary and unwanted?" He has no right to speak for anyone but himself. It’s up to each consumer to decide whether they need the gas. The only moral and practical solution: If you don’t need the gas, [do not] want it, or [don't] find it necessary, don’t buy it. But don’t block other buyers who decide they do need it, want it, and find it necessary.

As for all of the anti-PennEast NIMBY’s out there, keep in mind that 1000 miles of natgas pipelines that supply New Jerseyans—or for that matter the other 2.4 million miles of natgas pipelines now in use in America that 71 million Americans rely on. Be grateful that other NIMBY’s didn’t stop them.

On Thursday [June 11, 2015], Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said that "in virtually every instance, what I'm saying is supported by a significant majority of the American people," which is a bold claim for someone who has been broadly labeled a "socialist" candidate in Democratic camouflage.

But it makes this a good time to consider whether that term is being applied accurately in the early innings of this 2016 campaign, rather than as a pejorative to dismiss Sanders' ideas.

Because so far, the Senator is showing the electorate that a rejection of this "socialism" – the concept, not the brainless epithet – is something that most voters would probably find unthinkable.

And if you consult the polls, Sanders' claim is not only right, he is positively mainstream.

It’s true that these are mainstream Leftist policies. It’s also true that Sanders’s policies, if all are implemented, would not result in a fully socialist America. And, the Star-Ledger adds, America already has socialist programs in place. After reporting that “The 18-to-29 bloc even finds socialism (36 percent) almost as favorable as capitalism (39 percent),” the Star-Ledger observes:

Or perhaps they just know that socialist precepts, in large part, represent the civic and cultural foundation of our nation.

Consider: Many things we take for granted today were conceived by leftist coalitions that included Socialists and other Progressives, such as the eight-hour workday, women's suffrage, Medicare, and Social Security. Some were used as the platform for Eugene Debs' bid for the White House a century ago, though back then they called it "social insurance."

Labor rights, decent work conditions, and paid maternity leave were in large part socialist ideas, too, some championed by a Socialist congressman from the lower East Side named Meyer London.

And civil liberty was an ironclad tenet throughout our history – as long as your skin wasn't a tint darker than the majority - but when we interned Japanese Americans in 1942, one of the loudest objections was voiced by the prominent Socialist of the time, Norman Thomas.

Does the fact that Sanders’s policies have achieved significant popular traction mean Americans are now ready for an openly socialist president, and by extension are warming to socialism? Or is Sanders merely attempting to cash in on Americans’ confusion over what socialism is? If Americans understood that Sanders’s agenda is socialist, and would lead America toward full socialism, would they still support what Sanders is saying, to the extent they do support him? I left these comments (slightly edited for clarity). Given that some of what is mentioned above is not socialist at all, I felt it necessary to start from fundamentals:

First, let’s define our terms.

Socialism is statism based on collectivism. Collectivism is the idea that the group is the focus of moral concern. Under collectivism, the individual is subordinate to the group and can be sacrificed at any time and in any way, if the group deems such sacrifice to be to its good (the “public good,” the “good of society,” the “national interest,” etc.). Under socialism, the government represents the group, and may initiate aggressive force against private citizens at will, for the sake of and in the name of the group (society, the public, the proletariat, the race). The government may loot or, in socialism’s most violent and consistent manifestations, slaughter whomever it deems necessary to advance the good of the collective (e.g., the Kulaks in Soviet Russia; the Jews in Nazi Germany). That’s why socialism, in practice—and whether or not the government is elected—must logically—and often does, if not stopped in time—lead to totalitarian dictatorship, featuring persecution of, legalized looting of, and enslavement of the productive; the silencing and arrest of political dissenters; and mass murder. If the group is all that morally matters, then individuals are rightless creatures when it comes to their lives, property, and personal goals—all of which are expendable. Note how often it is said that the public good trumps the private interests. Under socialism, everyone but the rulers—and under democratic socialism, even the rulers, theoretically—are equal in slavery to the collective, which can only mean the state. The fact that 36% of young people have a positive view of socialism indicates that a large segment of our youngsters are either evil or ignorant.

Capitalism is constitutionally limited republicanism based on individualism. Individualism is the idea that the focus of moral concern is the individual. Under capitalism, the government protects the individual’s rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of personal goals, values, and happiness, so long as the individual respects the same rights of others, and pursues his goals through his own effort in voluntary, mutually consensual trade, association, and cooperation with others. The government protects individual rights by legally banning aggressive (initiatory) physical force against private citizens—not only aggression by private criminals but also, importantly, by the people’s own government officials. Under capitalism, government officials must live under the same moral law—respect for the rights of others—as ordinary citizens. No group, no matter its size or whether it’s a private mob or electoral majority or legislative body, can violate the rights of individuals—the individual being the smallest and only morally relevant minority. Under capitalism, everyone is equal before the law, in terms of their rights, which are inalienable—regardless of their social, personal, or economic standing. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action only, not an automatic claim to material values that others must be forced to provide. The fact that only 39% of young people have a positive view of capitalism indicates that most of our youngsters don’t know what capitalism is, or are simply immoral.

Under socialism, government is master. Under capitalism, government is servant. Under socialism, the individual is a subject. Under capitalism, the individual is sovereign.

It’s true that the legally imposed 8-hour workday is socialist. But how many people know that the eight-hour workday was made possible by capitalism, under which businessmen were free to increase through investment and innovation the productivity of labor to the point that people could earn a living wage with less work? If the 8-hour workday were imposed prior to the rise of capitalism, it would have condemned millions of adults to death. The same goes for child labor, which was eliminated not because of laws—an utterly simplistic notion—but because, thanks to capitalism, parents became productive enough to support their children without sending them out to work. If child labor laws were imposed pre-capitalist, millions of children would have been condemned to death, deprived of the freedom to earn a living.

How many people know that the legalization of gay marriage, women’s suffrage, and rationally objective anti-pollution laws are capitalist, because they protect individual’s rights to freedom of association, the right to vote, and the right to be free of other people’s pollution.

The internment of the Japanese—which was based on the collectivist idea that individual Japanese-Americans are guilty by virtue of the group they belonged to, which superseded their individual rights—was a socialist policy instituted by a “progressive” administration. That injustice was unequivocally anti-capitalist. Under capitalist principles, each person is judged as an individual, and only individuals objectively proved to be a national security threat could be incarcerated. Likewise, so-called “labor rights” are socialist, because under collectivism rights belong to groups. So “rights” become state-granted privileges bestowed only on members of favored political constituencies, at the expense of the violation of the actual rights of all other individuals—including, under so-called “labor rights” laws, workers precluded from earning a living due to the illegalization of certain jobs that politicians object to. Group “rights” are not rights, but cronyism: Cronyism is the product of socialism, not capitalism.

Whether or not you choose to label Sanders a socialist, his agenda is mostly thoroughgoing statism, and his policies are a series of steps on the road to totalitarian socialism in America —albeit under cover of fascist progressivism. Most of Sanders’s agenda is socialist-leaning and anti-capitalist; i.e., individual rights-violating and anti-liberty. And, since the centerpiece of Sanders’s campaign is an attack on a minority scapegoat labeled “the rich”; “the 1%”; the “billionaire class,” Sanders is a dangerous demagogue. The fact that so much of Sanders’s agenda polls well, if you can believe the polls, indicates how far the Left has succeeding in eroding America’s foundational principles—unalienable individual rights and limited, rights-protecting government. The Left had to destroy liberty, to make way for its regulatory welfare state. The old-line American Left—the so-called “liberals” or “progressives”—may never have wanted total socialism. But by destroying America’s Founding principles, they paved the way for a socialist candidate.

If Sanders’s candidacy gains significant traction—and I believe he has a better chance than conventional wisdom holds—it will be an unhealthy sign for our liberty, our economy, and our culture. The Right—by which I mean pro-liberty, not social or religious conservatives—has its work cut out for it in the coming election. In the 2016 election, the fundamental alternative of liberty vs. tyranny will be more clear-cut than at any time in half a century.

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The Star-Ledger brushes off the “socialist” label Sanders intentionally wears as meaningless—a mere “pejorative”; a “brainless epithet”—because many of Sanders’s specific policies have popular appeal or are “mainstream.” But the label is of critical importance, because socialism is a real evil. While it’s true that every new government regulation or redistributionist program is a step toward full socialism—albeit through the backdoor of fascism—most advocates of these governmental intrusions don’t want socialism. Not so with Sanders. The fact that Sanders considers himself an unabashed socialist tells you where he ultimately means to lead the country. His current policies are not ends in themselves but stepping stones to full totalitarian socialism, or the total collectivist regimentation of the economy and our lives.

For pro-capitalists, there may be a silver lining to Sanders’s campaign, however. The Star-Ledger—which dangerously evades the deadly historical and ideological nature of socialism—apparently hopes that Sanders’s entrance into the race will cast socialism into a more favorable light in Americans’ eyes, thanks to his sugar coating of socialism with popular issues. But Sanders’s entrance looks to me like an opportunity for the Right to turn that scenario on its head.

All of the things on Sanders’s wish list, as well as those things the Left has already foisted on America (labor laws, Social Security, etc.) are socialist. America has been moving toward socialism, piecemeal and stealthily, for decades. And for decades, America's socialist-sympathizing Left has been telling us that they don’t really want to bring socialism to America. They just want to preserve capitalism by smoothing out the rough edges and making it work better, and each of their programs are designed to do just that—improve capitalism. They want a “safety net,” they tell us—that’s all. Anyone pointing out that their programs are socialist were ridiculed, even as the socialist safety net relentlessly expanded to ensnare more and more people—today, almost everyone, to some degree. This is how the Left has been winning; deny socialism is their aim, even as they enact one step after another toward that end.

Sanders the openly avowed socialist blows the cover off of the Left’s stealth socialism. His candidacy clarifies the fact that the socialist policies already enacted are not just socialist exceptions to a mostly capitalist society. They, and the next set of Leftist policies Sanders advocates, are just stepping stones to full socialism. He is saying explicitly that, yes indeed, destroying capitalism and bringing in socialism is and always has been the goal.

Seen in that light, the full context of America’s century-long battle between socialism and capitalism becomes much clearer. Sanders places each piecemeal step toward socialism in proper long-term context. Each step is a step toward socialism, not isolated corrections to capitalism. If Americans come to see all of the socialist schemes—those already implemented and those now proposed—as piecemeal socialist steps toward full totalitarian socialism, it may become easier to convince Americans to stop the advance—and eventually reverse it.

Context is crucial. Sanders gives us that. But, exposing the context that Sanders brings to the battle is not enough, by itself, to turn the tide. The Right must still integrate this context into the economic and—above all—the long-neglected moral case for capitalism and against socialism. But Sanders may just have made the Right’s challenge a little easier. Let’s hope so. Because, to repeat, the fundamental alternative of liberty vs. tyranny will be more clear-cut in the 2016 election than at any time in at least half a century.

About Me

Greetings and welcome to my blog. My name is Michael A. (Mike) LaFerrara. I sometimes use the pen or "screen" name "Mike Zemack" or "Zemack" in online activism, such as posted comments on articles. “Zemack” stands for the first letters of the names of my six grandchildren. I was born in 1949 in New Jersey, U.S.A., where I retired from a career in the plumbing, building controls, and construction industries, and still reside with my wife of 45 years. The purpose of my blog is the discussion of a wide range of topics relating to human events from the perspective of Objectivism, the philosophy of reason, rational self-interest, and Americanism originated by Ayn Rand.

As Rand observed: “The professional intellectual is the field agent of the army whose commander-in-chief is the philosopher.” I am certainly not the philosopher. But neither am I a field agent, or general. I am a foot soldier in that Objectivist army that fights for an individualist society in which every person can live in dignified sovereignty, by his own reasoned judgment, for his own sake, in that state of peaceful coexistence with his fellow man that only capitalist political and economic freedom can provide. While I am a fully committed Objectivist, my opinions are based on my own understanding of Objectivism, and should not be taken as definitive “Objectivist positions.” For the full story of my journey toward Objectivism, see my Introduction.

One final introductory note: I strongly recommend Philosophy, Who Needs it, which highlights the inescapable importance of philosophy in every individual's life. I can be reached at mal.atlas@comcast.net. Thanks, Mike LaFerrara.

Recommended Essays/Videos

Quotes I Like

Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it. Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.—Francisco d'Anconia

I love getting older...I get to grow up and learn things. Madalyn, 5 years old, Montesorri student, and my grand-daughter

The best thing one can do for the poor is to not become one of them. Author Unknown

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed. Francis Bacon

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. Ronald Reagan

Thinking is hard work. If it weren't, more people would do it. Henry Ford

Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. Ayn Rand